How should I put this right?
By giving everyone a pound of flesh?
Everyone wants a bite
Of whatever is left.

I could break free
By tearing asunder
The design of me,
But it becomes empty plunder.

No one has ever loved me;
No one has put my good first.
And their apathy has shoved me
Into the hands of the absolute worst.

I know I carry all the blame as well,
But this hell

Was never my intention.

I woke up here alone.

I must be so hard to love.
So many people just figure it out
Push past the insufficiencies,
The blemishes and doubts,
And forge something sacred
In the intimacies and silence
But I’ve lived in isolation
With men of violence
And no one will stay
But those who ensure
I will pay for their presence;
If they must endure,
I must accommodate.
I must recompense.
I have lost all my hope,
All that I sensed
Was good and worthwhile.
These vile creatures trick
And abscond with my soul
I am sick
With longing to be whole and cared for
Beyond exploitation
The only men stronger than I am
Don’t respond to invocation.

And men are no longer the sort
To stand for the weak,
To state the cause of the one
Who cannot speak.

Men would prefer to amuse themselves,
To find some pleasant diversion
From their God-given roles
To defend against aspersions
And subjugations.
Manhood is lost
But the ones who really eat that cost

Are the women and children.

If I asked Noah
If rain makes the flowers grow
With the bodies of his neighbors,
Of the human race, still afloat
Would he wax poetical?
Would he grieve, or scream,
Or curl up under the monotony
Of the constant streams
In a mixture of confused gratitude
And fetal defeat?
Was his faith and vindication
Enough to make the rain taste sweet?
So many placed inside,
In his care, to tend-
Buffeted and isolated from without,
Limited and exhausted within-
Trapped in an ark,
The only way to stay alive,
Is no place to raise a family,
No place to build a life.

But later, when the floods receded
And the land turned green again
Lush with fertility, and safe
From the violence of godless men
Did the water wash away
The curses and the spilled blood?
Were the bones ever exhumed
From their graves of mud?
If I asked Noah then,
With his grandchildren at play
Around his feet, plenty to eat,
Plenty of room to splay,
No more mockery and injury,
No more toiling with hardened hearts
Nor tarrying in hope
With the very ones who tore him apart
But family existing in unity,
Lifting voices in praise and feast
To multiply and cultivate
In abundance and peace

If the death the rain delivered,
And the life that erupted in its wake
Was worth the years of struggle:
The work, the loneliness, the heartbreak;

Would he respond with a low, breathy chuckle?

I have been at the end of this life
Since my first breath
Yet You continue my stay
You postpone my death
While I crumble
Under the weight of pain
Moments out of context
Your kindness regains
The pulse of Your intention
Make me Your possession
You are the only
Worthy obsession.
I love the wild ones;
The ones on the outskirts:
The ones who belong to You
But cannot resist to flirt
With the unknown
With the cosmic gray
Into which the unexpected blends
We are what You say
We are and will be
By Your fiat
You keep us or we perish

Because You are more than assumption;
You have form, but aren’t formulaic.